Bakes and cakes for those who like the music loud

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Category Archives: Rock cakes

They don’t come much cooler than Debbie Harry do they? No; the answer is no. Devastatingly beautiful, with that creamy, cool voice and a nonchalance that every front woman since has tried to emulate – she’s part superhero if you ask me. So, obviously, my rock cake collection wouldn’t be complete without an ode to her, and as Blondie are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year, now is the time. This is no ordinary blondie recipe mind you, I went all out with leopard print white chocolate, rose petals and figs – a platinum Blondie, worthy of the capital B.

First up let me get this out of the way – I’m not a cupcake fun. Their sickly sweet, bunting-bearing omnipresence is something that, frankly, my kitchen can do without. Having said that, I loved the idea of toughening up these baking sissies, and what better way to do that then by making a batch to celebrate the stinging, nerve-shredding awesomeness that is Nirvana’s In Utero album as it celebrates its 20th anniversary this week. Nirvana are the reason I do many things, but when deciding on which of these things to immortalise in fondant form, I kept coming back to this: it’s always a good day when I’m wearing plaid playing Heart Shaped Box that little bit too loud. So I went with that.

Massive thanks to Easy Living for featuring both my Nirvana Smiley cake and the Queens of the Stone Age red velvet, in their fabulous gallery of the Most Amazing Cakes Ever. Two entries, I’m so chuffed! Take a look at the other stunning creations here, I’ve fallen hard for Choccywoccydoodah’s Til Death Us Do Part rock ‘n’ roll wedding cake, what do you guys think, any favourites?

Queens of the Stone Age have a new album out, … Like Clockwork, and it rules. In my world, this triggers certain behaviours that are to be tolerated, nay encouraged. These include spontaneous woops of joy, doing a little dance and the baking of a bad ass cake. Here is the bad ass cake. I love a red velvet sponge and I liked the idea of taking this sweet bake to the dark side with black cream cheese frosting and a little QOTSA tongue-in-cheek. Plus, for Josh Homme, it has to be red; all hail the king of the gingers!

My search for the perfect brownie recipe has been long and fraught but it turns out, the key to that elusive soft centre is to accept that brownies don’t play by the rules. When you test a batch of brownies, the knife should never come out clean, in fact, in the words of Nigel Slater, ‘if the skewer comes out clean, then I’m afraid you’ve blown it.’ And while I’m sure that the success of this particular batch comes down to knowing this, I like to think that the addition of a Ziggy Stardust lightning bolt played it’s part too.

Introducing the founding member of my rock cakes collection, the Nirvana smiley face. Yep I somehow managed to grunge-up a Victoria sponge, air punch! It wasn’t my intention to start a series of music-inspired bakes but this guy was such a hit and so much fun to design and make, that I decided to run with it. There’ll be plenty more rock cakes in the coming weeks but if there are any particular bands or pop tarts you’d like to see me immortalise in cake, then feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll see what I can do. Back to Smiley….

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Welcome to Blame it on the brioche, a baking blog dedicated to the bakes and cakes that I love. Sometimes I'll scale the soft peaks of the classics, other times I'll be crossing the beams of music and cake, but it'll always be delicious. This is a blog where the term rock cake will always have more to do with Kurt Cobain than it does with sultanas, just saying.
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